Thursday, July 29, 2010

i am not my mind - my mind thinks it is all I am

Siam, Nhong Khai, 2004
Something surprising hit me the other day:

I realized that the REAL ME is something ...something .... which I can't describe.

But of one thing I was sure: it is NOT my mind.

I never saw it so clearly before.
I am  not not my mind.
I AM more than a mind.
I AM more than my thoughts or even my feelings.

There is an " i " which has thoughts and feelings, but those thoughts and feelings are not the core of what I call " i " or " myself ".
I never really understood that part until now.

I always knew it intellectually but I didn't 'get it' until that day.

I have found that in my life, I can not simply do whatever my mind thinks of -  because I AM more than my mind.

I can try, and I will pay the price on a non mind level.
A price of pain: pain is not only a mental thing, pain transcends all levels, just as joy does.
Mind is a tool, a nice tool, but a tool IS not ME.

Taking this a few steps further:
My body IS not ME, it is a tool.
So who is ME ?
Whoever  I AM in the end: I'm not physical, even though I have dressed in a physical body.
I am not mind, even though a mind is part of the package I need to survive in this world.
Who AM i really ?
Well by definition: I can't give a purely an intellectual answer, because that is just a mind answer and as I said above: I AM not just my mind.
So what kind of answer can I give myself ?
Simple: FEEL experience.
BE.
The answer whatever it is has to be felt, experienced,  tasted, seen, I have to BE the answer.

When I think  about (using my mind), how can the answer be anything other than that ?
The answer cannot only be something that is not truly ME. The answer can be partly mental, but not ONLY and not exclusively mental.

The answer can be feeling but not ONLY feeling.
You have to BE the answer, in other words: you ARE the answer to your own question of who am I ?
Makes no logical sense ?
Of course not, it goes way beyond mind.
Mind likes to think it is EVERYTHING - but it isn't. It sits on top of feeling and that in turn is only a part of the real ME.
I wrote all this as I experienced it, now it is fading.
I have yet to BE and FEEL. 
I have yet to experience BEing who I am.
"But How ?" (mind asks)
Answer: "You intend by intending
You Be by BEing."

---(o)---

How did all this stuff about not being my mind come to me ?
It came like this: All my life I've used my mind to do things I thought would be 'good' by mind's standards. Mentally there was nothing wrong with those things, they were morally ok. They were even socially approved.
But to my surprise I kept running into something else. 

I kept running into myself, those bits that were not just my mind.
I would set up my perfect lifestyle as my mind had painted it. I found it, I was able to create it.
And surprise, surprise: I hated it.
But I should not, I had everything I could wish for, (so I told myself).
Well my mental picture had left out things.
My mental picture had ignored the fact that I am NOT a mind on legs, I am not a brain on legs.
I know, I know, mentally I always knew that. But I had not EXPERIENCED it.
THAT was the key. 


The experience.

What does a good mental geeek and engineer do in response to all this ?
He thinks harder.
A bit like the old colonial maxim: if the natives don't understand English, you have to just shout louder.
I did the same to myself: I thought harder, I looked harder with the mind. I analyzed and thought and argued, and came to the conclusion that I ought not to feel what I felt and that I ought to be deliriously happy and ecstatically happy. 

I had realized my dreams.
So if I was not happy, that meant there was something wrong with me. 

Logic told me I ought to be happy.
I spent a number of years going in circles like this.
The mind is great at rationalizing (actually it is not the mind that does that, the mind is just the tool, it is the intent that drives the mind which does the rationalizing).

In the end the answer was much much simpler. There was nothing wrong with me.
I had simply ignored the fact that I was not just a mind.
There were other parts of me. Non mental parts. 

Non-mind parts. 
In fact the mind is just a small part of the whole.

---(o)---


The world thinks that people without external rules are lawless and would do anything... therefore we need more rules to control them and keep things from disintegrating and uttter chaos.
Actually people would not do just any wild thing at all.
People are more than minds, and the parts of all of us that are non-mind are the parts that KNOW what we truly are and want in life. It is only mind that that thinks it is free and unfettered.

I have used my mind and I have tried to live as though I was just a mind. It does now work, it cannot work. I understand that now.
 
I only understood this because I see that even though I have freedom to do whatever I want on the mental level, in reality I have to live with myself, in reality I am NOT just my mind, I am something more than a mind.  

 

It is the external rules of power and control that separate people from their true selves (their Temples of Self) And it is separated from themselves people who DO do anything wild & crazy they can think of, because they are separated from themselves ...that is why they can (to a degree). But it is the fear of chaos and the imposition of too many rules that creates  separated-from-self people in the first place. These people then provide the evidence for why those rules were necessary in the first place. It becomes a vicious self-sustaining circle.


Note1: Everyone is more or less separated-from-self.
Note2: not all rules are primarily for power and control, many rules are simply for convenience e.g. do your toilet business in the toilet not anywhere else. Rules like that are primarily practical, they are really commonsense. Those are not the rules I talk about. - more on this in another blog... 



---(o)---